A search engine is a type of program that may be hosted and executed by a server. A server may execute a search engine to enable users to search for documents in a networked computer system based on search queries that are provided by the users. For instance, the server may match search terms (e.g., keywords) that are included in a user's search query to metadata associated with documents that are stored in (or otherwise accessible to) the networked computer system. Documents that are retrieved in response to the search query are provided to the user as respective search results. The documents are often ranked based on how closely their metadata matches the search terms. For example, the documents may be listed in an order that corresponds to the rankings of the respective documents. The document having the highest ranking is usually listed first in the search result.
One type of search result is referred to as a social search result. A social search result is a search result that is received from a social networking domain (e.g., a social networking Web site). Examples of a social networking domain include but are not limited to Badoo®, Bebo®, Classmates.com®, Habbo®, Facebook®, Linkedin®, Myspace®, Orkut®, Qzone®, Renren™, Vkontakte™, etc. Each social search result typically indicates information from a user profile on a social networking domain.
Search engines traditionally are not capable of distinguishing social search results from other types of search results. Moreover, if a user's search query results in multiple social search results that are associated with different people who have the same name, the user may not be able to distinguish information regarding a particular person for whom the user is searching from information regarding the other people who have the same name. Accordingly, the user may perform multiple search queries, click multiple social search results, and/or access a third-party domain to perform additional searching to find information regarding the particular person for whom the user is searching.